


the world was void

by river_of_words



Series: you're trying to conceal a euphonium [4]
Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: 13 is not okay and also not very good to yaz, Chapter 2 Angst, Confrontations, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/F, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Fluff and Hurt/Comfort, Post-Episode: s11e04 Arachnids in the UK, Post-Episode: s12e08 The Haunting of Villa Diodati, a little bit of mild dissociation in chapter 2, and the comfort is... scarce, chapter 1 fluff, comparing 13 to the stars and the universe because im gay, im never sure if hurt/comfort is just physical hurt or emotional hurt as well?, they try, this is the emotional kind, why is tagging so hard
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-04
Updated: 2020-09-04
Packaged: 2021-03-06 14:55:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,868
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26290723
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/river_of_words/pseuds/river_of_words
Summary: Yaz's first night on the Tardis contrasted with her last.
Relationships: Thirteenth Doctor/Yasmin Khan
Series: you're trying to conceal a euphonium [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1885408
Comments: 20
Kudos: 28





	1. first night

The first night on the Tardis Yaz couldn’t sleep. She lay in her bed on the Tardis, in her room that looked a little too much like her room at home, and listened to the vibration of what she thought must be the Tardis’s engines in the walls. The sound seemed to come and go, changing with her attention on it. Or her expectation.

Eventually she gave up, got up, put a blanket around her shoulders and braved the corridor. The cold metal meeting her bare feet instead of warm wood immediately shattered the illusion her bedroom was providing. She was on a spaceship, undeniably. She took a deep breath and followed the string of lights in the walls in, what she thought, the direction of the console room.

She had remembered the way and found the console room without much difficulty, but when the orange light greeted her from the end of the hallway, she hesitated and slowed down, lingering just outside, unsure of her place, her privileges. Could she just walk in? Was the Doctor in there or had she gone to bed too?

Yaz got a little closer, peered around the corner. The Doctor _was_ in there. Doing something at the console. Yaz wavered on the threshold, feeling like a homesick kid at a sleepover, timidly coming down the stairs in the middle of the night. The Doctor looked up and noticed her. Her smile made Yaz instantly forget how she could have ever felt like she might be unwanted. She stepped into the orange light.

“Hey Yaz.”

The lights around the console room brightened briefly as if to welcome Yaz in. The Doctor straightened up, leaving her work at the console forgotten. A curiosity in her face that wasn’t quite concern yet.

“You okay? Do you need something?”

Big question. Yaz shook her head.

“No, no, I’m fine, just–“ she pulled the blanket a bit tighter around herself. “Couldn’t sleep, you know, it’s all–” she trailed off, eyes drifting around the console room.

“A bit much?” the Doctor offered.

Yaz nodded silently. When her eyes circled back to the Doctor, she was looking at Yaz, leaning forward on the console, a soft smile on her face. She held Yaz’s gaze. Yaz didn’t know what she was looking for, or waiting for, in Yaz’s eyes, but she was willing to be held under the spell until the Doctor had found it. It felt like a dream – standing in this magical not-really-a-police-box police box that held the promise of so many secrets screaming out at Yaz to be uncovered, with this magical not-really-a-woman woman who might let Yaz in on some. Floating through the void together like this, Yaz could almost believe they were the only two people left in existence.

The Doctor moved suddenly, bouncing toward Yaz as if she had been moving the entire time, but her body had only just remembered. She stuck out her hand to Yaz, an invitation.

“Want to see some more?”

Yaz had taken the Doctor’s hand and was being led out of the console room before her brain caught up.

The Doctor guided Yaz through a labyrinth of corridors, pointing out doors and telling her what was behind them, pulling Yaz away from hallways that folded in on themselves, or whose floors dropped out from where Yaz had _just_ been standing.

“Sorry,” the Doctor grinned at her sheepishly as they looked into the bottomless pit that had opened up.

“How far down does that go?”

“Don’t know. The Tardis likes to play sometimes. Come on, this way.” She pulled Yaz along again.

Trying to take in the dangers and surprises coming from every side – she was pretty sure she saw a swimming pool at the end of one hallway – Yaz almost didn’t notice when they stopped walking. She was pulled back by the Doctor’s hand, which was attached to the Doctor, who had stopped, in front of a set of large, round spaceship doors. Real spaceship doors, that looked like they belonged on a spaceship. Not wood.

When the Doctor pressed a button next to the doors and they slid open, Yaz gasped and stumbled back. It was Space behind the door. Just immense, immeasurable, Space.

“Sorry!” The Doctor smashed the button and the doors closed. “Sorry! I’m sorry. It’s safe! Sorry!”

Yaz looked at her with wide eyes, heart pounding in her chest. She’d felt like she was falling, falling through the door out into space.

“Sorry, should’ve warned you.” The Doctor scrunched up her face. “Didn’t think about that.”

Yaz’s adrenaline came out in a shaky little laugh. “Yes, you should have! What is _that_?” The Doctor still hadn’t let go of her hand.

“Do-over. Yaz–” She gestured at the doors like she was introducing them. “–observation deck. Observation deck, Yaz. It’ll look like you’re being sucked out into space, but you aren’t. There’s a window.” She smiled. “Promise.” Her eyes met Yaz’s. “Ready?”

Yaz took a deep breath. “Ready.”

The doors opened again. The sight they gave way to was just as dizzying the second time. Yaz gripped the Doctor’s hand harder and stepped inside, eyes glued to the miracle in front of her. It was space like the pictures, like the simulations. It was light and colour, swirling, or no– still. With unimaginable depth and distance, or no– flat. Concepts and perception slipping through her fingers as she tried to make sense of what she was looking at. It wasn’t like anything her brain had ever tried to process. It didn’t know where to start. She left her brain to it and in the meantime took over operations of her lungs, as they seemed to have got lost in the shuffle.

The Doctor had walked in after her and closed the door behind them, still keeping a firm grip on Yaz’s hand. Which Yaz was grateful for, because she thought if the Doctor let go, she might float away.

The Doctor walked further into the room, gently pulling Yaz along like she was a balloon, talking about the technology of the glass, the room, something like that. Yaz wasn’t really listening. Spellbound by the view. She couldn’t see a window, just space. Just swirling light and colour, just stars, just–

“The Milky Way,” Yaz breathed, suddenly understanding, feeling like she was dissolving the very concepts she was trying to wrap her head around, by taking the words in her mouth.

The Doctor turned around, stood in front of her, taking Yaz's hands in hers, blocking the view with her face.

“Home,” she whispered, voice somewhere between tender and reverent and eyes glittering like the cloud of stars behind her. “Come sit!” She turned and jumped down two large steps to a lower area of the room which Yaz hadn’t noticed yet. The Doctor’s nonchalant leap toward the edge where the room seemed to fall into darkness, made Yaz’s stomach drop. A couple million years of evolution telling her she should not get closer. She froze.

“It’s safe! I promise!” the Doctor said, spreading her arms and twirling around.

“I believe you!” Yaz laughed, made giggly by the excitement and adrenaline. She forced her legs to walk through the fear and made it to the lower level. She dropped on a sofa, half-conscious of the fact that her hands were grabbing around for something to hold onto. Like this cushion was going to stop her from falling into the abyss if the window actually disappeared. “Just going to sit here though, if you don’t mind.”

The Doctor bounced back to her and dropped down next to her on the sofa. They shuffled some pillows around, making space for themselves, then settled into a quietness, an awe-struck silence. Their excitement in the form of giggliness and bounciness slowly flowing out of them, mixing above their heads, joining the great swirling universe outside. Yaz pulled a pillow onto her lap and the Doctor took off her coat. Their breathing evened out, synchronised with the pulsing of the stars outside. The giddiness faded but not the awe. Not the wonder. Every time Yaz blinked, when she opened her eyes, it was there again, just as strong as the first time. And so was the feeling of falling, of being pulled toward the galaxy outside, gravity tugging at her heart.

“I feel like I’m falling,” Yaz said, after an eternity. Her voice sounded strange and alien, dancing around the room, until gravity took hold of it and dragged it back home.

“I know,” the Doctor whispered, in awe. There was something in her voice that made Yaz look at her, tearing her eyes away from the window for the first time since they sat down. The Doctor, glittering with stars tangled in her hair, kept her eyes trained on the window. Sitting crosslegged with an elbow on her knee and her chin in her hand. She looked young in her wonder and ageless in her understanding, in her acceptance. While Yaz was trying to fit the experience of life on earth and the experience of seeing the entire Milky Way in front of her through a window, together in her head, the Doctor seemed to have no trouble. Yaz felt like she might be able to hold everything in her head; the lives of ants, the lives of humans, the lives of galaxies.

The Doctor slowly turned her head on her hand to face Yaz, a mischievous smile on her face that Yaz right away saw the danger in. That smile could raise empires, or topple them. That smile would be followed into war, to the end of the universe. That smile was focused on Yaz, right now.

“Are you watching me, Yasmin Khan?”

Yaz nodded slowly, meeting the Doctor’s star-filled eyes, all of her small human concerns, like embarrassment, having been evaporated by the sight of the Milky Way. She let her eyes fly back and forth between the Doctor’s eyes, watching the galaxies in them, flowing with ichor.

“Yes,” she said, and it was the most honest she’d ever been.

The Doctor’s smile brightened a little and Yaz knew you couldn’t live on stars but oh if one looked at you like that, wouldn’t you try? The Doctor raised her eyebrows, a play-innocence which her grin betrayed.

“There’s an entire galaxy for you to look at,” she said, and it sounded almost like _I’ve brought you an entire galaxy to look at_.

Yaz felt like her insides were expanding, lungs pressing against her ribs, heart climbing up her throat. She wasn’t sure who was the culprit; the _entire galaxy_ or the _I’ve brought you._

“I’ve seen it,” she said, still looking at the Doctor, the Doctor still looking at her. And Yaz _had_ seen it. She was still seeing it now. From the corners of her eyes, filling the space around the Doctor, lighting her up, making her glow softly golden.

The Doctor chuckled, dropping her head from her hands, breaking eye contact. Time crashed into motion around Yaz. She hadn’t realised it had stopped. She shifted, squeezing the pillow on her lap, exhaling.

“The entire thing?” the Doctor asked, looking from the Milky Way outside back to Yaz. The tension, like static electricity between them, discharged.

Yaz sat up, pulled one knee toward her chest and leaned back against the sofa. “Not yet,” she said, sparing the Milky Way a glance like she was just about to pick where she wanted to go first. The Doctor laughed warmly at her self-assured nonchalance.

“Not yet?”

“No, but I will,” Yaz said, bringing her attention back to the Doctor. “It’s what I signed up for, isn’t it?”

The Doctor grinned. “I think you signed up for way more than the Milky Way, Yasmin Khan.” Yaz revelled in the way the Doctor said her name, like a cherished, sacred thing. “You signed up for the whole universe.”

She _had_ signed up for the whole universe. Yaz looked at the Doctor and grinned her own mischievous smile. She was going to _get_ the whole universe.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yeah so if you want the fluff and not the angst you should not read the next chapter because it gets really sad and nobody is happy. if you want the character-analysis driven angst however
> 
> hey if you wanna have a fun time, watch that scene at the end of 11x4, watch yazs face as the doctor warns them, watch yazs face as the doctor tells them to be sure, watch the way her eyes light up as she looks at the doctor, watch the way she runs to the doctor first, watch the way the doctor watches her as she puts her hand on the doctors hand on the demateralisation lever, watch them! and then read this chapter. i dont think this scene is that implausible then. both of them shining so bright. the way they look at each other.
> 
> and then, if you want to have less fun, but cherish yaz's growth and development, watch yaz's face as the doctor talks to them at the end of fugitive of the judoon. watch the way her face softens from angry when the doctor insults ryan, to empathy for the doctors pain. watch the way she puts her anger on pause, because the doctor is very upset and needs friends right now. and then read the next chapter. thats where i was coming from with the next chapter.
> 
> let me know what you thought!


	2. last night

The night after they met Mary Shelley and Frankenstein’s monster, Yaz lay in bed and didn’t sleep. She hadn’t bothered to change out of her clothes. She didn’t think she was going to sleep tonight. She didn’t think anyone was sleeping tonight. The Tardis was filled with the air of awake people pretending to be asleep. When she felt the Tardis start moving – the shudder through the walls like muscles getting ready for a jump – she got up.

The movements of the Tardis were slow and steady as Yaz walked through the silent corridors, a ship on calm waters, the Doctor was steering her carefully. After taking off from 1816, the Doctor had said she needed to make preparations and sent them off to bed. “You’re no use exhausted.” Tell that to the mirror, Doctor.

Yaz made her way to the console room, to ask where they were going, to offer help, or just because. Just because she wanted to get yelled at some more, she thought with a grimace. Just because she felt like asking some more questions that didn't get answered. Just because being in the same room hadn’t been all that much fun lately but it beat lying awake in separate rooms, pretending to be asleep, while they waited for the morning to come and bring them war. Just because she was human, and didn’t want to be alone right now.

She strode into the console room, a known refrain of arguments and protests dying on her lips when she realised the Doctor wasn’t there. She looked around the dim console room, checking in the shadows and corners and behind pillars, but the Doctor really wasn’t there. Yaz stopped and stared at some half-assembled equipment lying abandoned on the floor. She couldn’t tell what any of it was supposed to do.

She chewed the inside of her mouth and considered. The Tardis was endless, and changeable. The Doctor could be anywhere. Without either the Doctor or the Tardis on her side, Yaz would never find her. She had a hunch though. Or maybe just a memory. And the feeling that the Tardis was on her side. She walked into the corridor the Doctor had led her into, the first time Yaz had walked into the console room in the middle of the night.

She still knew the way, or the Tardis molded itself to what she thought the way was, and she found the rounded spaceship doors. The view when she pressed the door button once again took her breath away, made her feel like she was floating. She took a deep breath and walked in.

At first Yaz thought she’d been wrong. The Doctor wasn’t here. She was about to turn around and try somewhere else when she stopped. Heard a noise? It might have been herself but– She approached the window, stomping down her survival instinct, and jumped off the steps. And she hadn’t been wrong. The Doctor was sitting on the floor, curled up in the corner where the wall met the window, staring out.

When Yaz jumped down, the Doctor startled badly, but recovered quickly. Or, suppressed, Yaz amended, hid, not recovered. The Doctor looked up and when she saw who it was that had come to disturb her, Yaz thought she was trying not to glare. She didn’t succeed, but the attempt was noted.

Yaz sat down on a sofa halfway across the room, close enough to have a conversation, far enough away that she had a full view of the Doctor, who had turnt her gaze back outside. A galaxy again, but Yaz wasn’t sure it was the Milky Way this time. It looked a lot less golden, less alive, more broken, more dying.

“What do you want?” the Doctor asked. Snarled.

Yaz tried not to flinch. And sighed. Big question.

 _For you to let us in, let us help. To know what’s happened, what changed, why you're hurting so badly._ _To understand, to know. To hear about those you've lost so horribly._

“Couldn’t sleep,” she said.

The Doctor snorted, bleak and bitter. Yaz was pretty sure she knew what that meant. _Yeah, me neither._ She looked at Yaz like she was still expecting an answer to her question.

“Didn’t want to be alone,” Yaz offered.

“Why don’t you go find Ryan or Graham,” the Doctor said. _They’re better company_ , she didn’t say, but they were both thinking it.

Yaz pulled her legs up on the sofa. “They’re asleep.”

The Doctor scoffed incredulously.

Okay, apparently they _weren’t_ doing the pretending thing tonight. Fine. “They aren’t the people who owe me explanations.” There, then. You can have it if you want it, Doctor.

The Doctor bristled but kept her eyes studiously on the galaxy outside.

“In fact, I think you owe them some too.”

“Why didn’t you bring them in here too, then?” Petty.

“Oh, did you want me to?” Yaz could play that game.

“No, I’d prefer it if you leave actually,” the Doctor said, finally turning her face to Yaz. Yaz wondered if she opened the door to an emotional conversation on purpose, or if she hadn’t realised, in her attempt to be as petty and hostile as possible, that she actually just told Yaz something about how she was feeling. Not anything that wasn’t screamingly obvious from body language, but still.

“Think I got that,” Yaz muttered, pulling a loose thread hanging out of the pillow in her hands.

After a couple of minutes of sullen silence, the Doctor stammered, “Can you _please_ go be awake somewhere else?” and Yaz looked up in surprise. The Doctor looked small, scared and lost, her eyes were wide and shiny, pleading. All the hostility drained away. Yaz realised the Doctor was trembling. Had she been the entire time? It wasn’t cold in this room. Yaz grabbed around the sofa for a spare blanket and gave it a kick. It slid across the floor to the Doctor. She looked at it, looked at Yaz, Yaz shrugged. She put it around her shoulders but it didn’t stop her trembling.

The Doctor stared at Yaz, expectant, waiting for her to comply with her demands. Yaz leaned an elbow on the armrest, put her chin in her hand, made herself comfortable, and stared right back. When it sunk in that she wasn’t going to glare Yaz out of the room, the Doctor tried with words again.

“ _Yaz–_ ”

Yeah, that wasn’t going to be enough this time.

“Yes?” Yaz asked, maintaining eye contact.

“ _I’ll be with you_ ,” the Doctor said slowly, like every word took effort, “ _in the morning_.”

“You want to be left alone?”

“ _Yes_ ,” the Doctor said through gritted teeth.

With your grief, Yaz didn’t say. “In the _stratosphere_ ,” she said, only barely managing not to spit the word around the lump in her throat.

The Doctor looked away, out of the window, hid her face in the shadows of the hood of her coat. Yaz chewed her lip and watched her, squished in the corner, stuck between a wall and the universe, trembling like a rabbit, looking tiny and exhausted, breakable. And tomorrow she would look big again, larger than life and invincible. She always did.

Yaz hadn’t seen this side of it before. Not as such. Not in its bare and raw entirety. But she knew it was there. She knew because she’d seen glimmers of it, pieces falling through the cracks. In moments caught off-guard. In moments where the Doctor thought she was alone. When she was tired, overwhelmed, or afraid. The flickering of the illusion. The bad cover-ups that came down to force more than elegance. The Doctor was a bad liar. Or maybe she just didn’t care that they knew she was lying to them. As long as they didn’t ask. As long as they went along and played pretend. Maybe they weren’t even worth trying to fool properly.

The Doctor broke the silence clumsily, almost like she didn't mean to, like a glass slipping through her jittery fingers.

“I am sorry.”

It almost didn’t sound like an insult, she almost managed not to scowl.

“Yeah,” Yaz said, because that was by no means enough. That was by no means making up for telling– no, _yelling_ at your friends to choose between their lives and billions of others. For punishing them for not wanting to make that choice. It was _not_ enough.

The Doctor stared at her silently, and then Yaz thought she got it too, because she sighed and hung her head. She didn’t say anything, but her eyes, trained on the floor, were focused, and her silence felt like it was bouncing on top of a springboard. So Yaz waited.

“I shouldn’t have said that,” the Doctor muttered eventually, avoiding Yaz’s burning eyes as her gaze wandered back to the window.

“Because you don’t–” Yaz was cut off by her own lungs taking a sudden sharp breath. “Because you don’t think–”

“I shouldn’t have _said it_ ,” the Doctor repeated, which Yaz interpreted as an answer to the question she hadn’t asked. Her hand shot out and hit the couch cushion. The Doctor looked up, startled.

“Then what _should_ you have said!” Yaz said, voice shaking, trying to keep herself from shouting. “ _What_ should you have said! Maybe try saying _that_!”

The change in the Doctor was sudden and sonorous like the falling glass meeting the floor. She dropped her hands to the floor and leaned forward, coiled and deadly still.

“You really want to do this _now_?” she hissed. She had barely moved, was still squished between wall and window, and yet looked so much bigger. Like a switch had flipped. Prey to predator. Glass to shard.

Yaz sat up, raised her head despite her racing heart and burning eyes, unwilling to be intimidated.

“ _No_ ,” she said, meeting the Doctor’s dark eyes. “I _don’t_ want to do this now. I want to do this weeks ago after we met Ruth, I want to do this months ago after we met the Master, I want to be in the console room helping you prepare for whatever happens tomorrow! But you aren’t there, are you! You’re here. So I’m here. And we’re doing this now, because _now_ is all we have _left_!”

The Doctor looked at her blankly and slowly shook her head. “What do you want from me?” she asked, so wearily, like it was the biggest mystery in the world.

Yaz scoffed incredulously. “Seriously?”

The Doctor’s face told her, yes, seriously.

Yaz sighed. “We are going to follow you into a warzone–”

“You don’t have to,” the Doctor said, like it was automatic.

“We are going to follow you into war,” Yaz said, like she hadn't spoken, “and you won't let us have even a _crumb_ of the truth.”

“I can take you home,” the Doctor said, like she wasn’t listening.

“That’s not the point-”

“You don’t have to come-”

“I’m _choosing to-_ ”

“You can go home, you can be safe-”

“I’m not going to leave you!” Yaz said, raising her voice, exasperated.

“I said– I promised–”

“–no guarantee of safety,” Yaz said, talking over her.

“–I would keep you alive and I would get you back... home...”

The Doctor fell silent as she heard Yaz’s words. They looked at each other. Then she shook her head.

“No, no, I would keep you safe, I said, _I promised_ , I would keep her safe.”

Yaz got pulled away from the conversational avenue she was only a moment ago so adamantly trying to go down – and she still would, they weren’t done with this – to the door that this pronoun slip-up just opened. _Her._ She sat up. _Who?_ seemed like a question that would be ignored. _How?_ Yaz was pretty sure had already been answered. The Doctor had gone very still, staring straight ahead with wide unseeing eyes. Yaz went over and sat down in front of her.

“Doctor,” she started tentatively, “whoever you promised that to, whatever happened to them, you didn’t make that promise to _us_.” Yaz paused. “To _me._ ” The Doctor seemed to be seeing Yaz again. Or at least she seemed to be listening, even if she was still seeing other things as well.

“I signed up for this, remember?”

Yaz sought eye contact. Found the eyes that glittered gold the last time they were here, reflecting trillions of stars, reflecting home in the broadest sense.

“The universe, the _whole_ universe. Not just the safe parts, not just the nice parts.” _You haven’t delivered yet_ , she wanted to add, but she didn’t.

“ _Please_ ,” was all the Doctor said.

Yaz sighed and moved over to sit next to her with her back against the wall. The Doctor’s eyes drifted back to the window, to the broken-looking galaxy outside. Yaz watched how the cold faded light cast stark shadows on her face, made her eyes look dark, deepened the bags under them. She looked old in her grief, ageless in her understanding, in her resignation. She looked lonely in her pain.

“What’s that?” Yaz asked, nodding to the galaxy outside.

“Home,” the Doctor whispered.

“Looks different from before.”

“More dead,” the Doctor said. “The Milky Way is dead.” _And I killed it_ , Yaz heard in the silence. “Everything dies, Yaz.” She turned her head to look at Yaz. “ _Everyone._ _dies_.”

Yaz looked in her eyes, once so full of life, a treasure chest of wonder and secrets, now so tired, so full of death. And still holding on to their secrets.

“We’re not going to die,” Yaz said sternly, resisting the impulse to hold the Doctor’s hand, touch her shoulder, provide comfort Yaz was pretty sure was unwanted.

“ _Yes, you are._ ” She looked at Yaz intently, with something almost like amusement tangled in her desperation. Amusement at Yaz’s noncomprehension, at her limited point of view, at her young age.

Yaz did not resist the impulse to give the Doctor a shove. She regretted sitting at the wrong angle for slapping. The shove didn’t do much since the Doctor was already flat against the window, but it communicated what Yaz meant it to and that was the main point. She pushed herself away from the Doctor and stood up, walked away. Walked away, walked away. Leapt up the two steps, channeled her anger into her legs instead of her fists and hoped she could blink away the tears before she reached the opposite end of the room and would have to turn around.

How dare she. _How_ _dare she_!

“How _dare_ you.” She turned around, started walking back, screw the tears, the Doctor could see how much she hurt Yaz. “How _dare you_!” Her voice broke but she didn’t care anymore. She reached the stairs and looked down on the Doctor. Yaz couldn’t see her face, only blurry blobs of colour and light. “How dare you say that to me!” Her shoulders shocked with fast deep breaths and she wiped her sleeve over her eyes angrily. She opened her mouth to say more but out came only a strangled string of sobs. The Doctor had hit a vein in Yaz’s lungs and now all the sadness and worry and fear and hurt were choking her, drowning her. And Yaz let it, for the first time in months, she allowed herself to feel it. She sank down on the edge of the stairs, doubled over, face in her arms, arms on her thighs, sobs tearing through her chest painfully.

Pain like every time she’d bit her tongue, every time she’d swallowed her fear, summoned up patience, empathy, courage, every time she’d told herself, _later, later, we’ll talk about this later,_ every time the Doctor added a new offense to Yaz’s list of things she was owed apologies for. _Not now, not now, she’s hurt, wait your turn._

Yaz startled at the sensation of something being put on her shoulders. She sat up, instinctively grabbing the blanket about to slide off her shoulders. Her stomach shocked with swallowed sobs as she saw the Doctor sit down next to her on the top of the stairs. Yaz pulled the blanket tight around herself protectively, sought comfort and support in the fabric bundling up in her fists. She turned to the Doctor, as much as she could sitting next to her, didn’t wipe her tears or snot, let the sharp deep breaths shudder through her body and sat up straight. Didn’t hide her pain for the Doctor’s sake. The Doctor didn’t even do her the courtesy of looking at her. Kept her eyes on her feet swinging and thumping against the steps. Yaz sniffed.

“We’ve been your _friends_.” A gasp interrupted her as her lungs desperately tried to refill with air. “We’ve been _your friends,_ ” she repeated, watching the Doctor’s stilling feet betray that she was listening. “And we’ve been _good_ friends. We’ve been empathetic and understanding and we’ve been _very_ patient. We’ve done–” she got cut off by another gasp that made fresh tears well up and her voice shake, “–we’ve done _everything_ we can to help you.” She blinked and warm tears rolled down her face. She wiped them off with her sleeve. “We’ve given you space. We’ve tried to figure out what’s wrong. We’ve shown you we’re–” another sob, and another, and a whole new flood of tears. After a few attempts to talk through it, she surrendered and laid her head on her arms again. Letting herself cry all the tears she had denied herself for months. Because Yaz wasn’t allowed to be hurt. The Doctor didn’t mean the things she said. She was just hurting. Hurt people hurt people. She would let them in eventually. She would tell them what’s going on and she would stop lashing out at them. But here they were now, at the end. Of what, Yaz didn’t know, but it felt like an end. Like a precipice. A juncture. And the way back was quickly closing. Do or die, sink or swim, fall or-

Yaz didn’t want to go back. She wanted to go forward, she wanted to jump and see if she would fly. But she was not jumping with weights tied around her legs. She was not suicidal.

Slowly her tears dried up, her breathing evened out, her eyes felt raw and when she lifted her head, she had to close them against the light for a moment. When she opened them again she saw the Doctor, who had not moved a muscle. She still wasn't looking at Yaz, but she was so deliberately not looking at Yaz that she might as well have been staring right at her.

“Thanks,” Yaz said, clearing her throat a couple of times before her voice sounded like it should again. She gestured to the blanket. “For the blanket.” There wasn’t much else to thank her for.

The Doctor gave the tiniest of nods. A slight twitch that had enough plausible deniability to be accidental, but Yaz knew it wasn't. She waited for something more. Acknowledgment, apology, _anything_ more. When it started to seem like that wasn’t something she should be waiting for, Yaz decided to start beating this conversation with a stick until she got at least one thing out of it.

“It isn’t fair, you know,” she said, and her voice sounded surprisingly steady, calm. “How you’re treating us.”

“I know.”

“An apology isn’t going to make up for this.”

“I know.”

The Doctor gently swung her feet. Her heel thumped against the steps. Yaz could feel the vibration shudder through the stairs and floor and into her bones.

“I just want to understand why.”

“I know.”

Thump.

Thump.

Thump.

“Do you want your blanket back?”

The Doctor looked up at Yaz, eyes flicking from her face to the blanket on her shoulders and back to her face. Yaz imagined what she might look like in the Doctor’s eyes. Red eyes, snotty face, messy hair. Not her best. She considered the Doctor. Dead eyes, pale face, messy hair. Neither of them were really at their best.

“Nah, keep it.”

“Sure?”

“Why?”

“Aren’t you cold?”

The Doctor looked at her quizically.

“You’re shivering,” Yaz pointed out. The Doctor looked down at her hands. She was still trembling all over.

“Huh.”

Yaz took the blanket from her shoulders and put it on the Doctor. Then she jumped off the stairs and found another couple of blankets spread out over several sofas. She brought back three, gave one to the Doctor and sat back down next to her. With both of them bundled up, Yaz watched the Doctor sink back down to wherever she went when she went quiet. Looking at her, her not-really-a-friend, the mad not-really-a-woman in her not-really-a-police-box, Yaz found that her anger and her hurt were two shrunken little rocks lying at the bottom of her lungs. Cooled lava. And she found that her empathy and concern were not shy to well up and fill the newly open space.

“Are you okay?” Yaz asked softly, eyes on the Doctor’s face, in profile and half hidden by hair, pulling her back up to the surface from the depths.

“I’m– _I will be_ ,” the Doctor pre-emptively corrected herself in response to the skeptical look Yaz was about to give her. “I’ll be fine.”

“Yeah, sure, probably,” Yaz said noncommittally, she wasn't as sure about that anymore as she once had been. “But are you okay _now_?”

The Doctor looked at Yaz, round eyes disarming and deceptively open. “Because of what we’re going to do tomorrow?”

Yaz didn’t know. Yaz didn’t know if that was the question she wanted to ask. She was shaking her head before she realised. Apparently that _wasn’t_ the question she wanted to ask.

“What then?” the Doctor asked, but it was more curious than hostile.

Yaz sifted through the thousand things she’d wanted to say, ask, demand, yell, for weeks, and couldn’t find the answer. She shook her head and looked at the Milky Way flickering outside the window. Its light seemed to be fading. The Doctor followed her gaze and exhaled a long breath. Yaz shifted over a little until she could feel the Doctor’s shoulder, wrapped up in blankets, faintly brush against hers, also wrapped up in blankets. The idea of touch, the promise of connection, more than the experience of it. Yaz looked at the darkening Milky Way and let it pull the breath out of her lungs. 

“I still feel like I’m falling,” she whispered.

The movement of the Doctor nodding gently jostled Yaz.

“I know,” the Doctor said, the words didn’t have the wonder of the first time. They felt heavy like secrets Yaz maybe regretted ever having wished to know. “You’ve seen it now.”

“The Milky Way?”

“The universe.”

“Not all of it.”

“Not yet.”

Yaz turned her head to look at the Doctor. “Will I?”

The Doctor wriggled an arm free from her blankets, found Yaz’s hand and weaved her fingers through Yaz’s. “It’s what you signed up for, isn’t it?”

Yaz nodded and turned back to the window. Looked into the darkness. It’s what she signed up for.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> theres a big disconnect with the original conceptual idea i had for this fic and the eventual thing it turned into. i wanted to do yaz's first night and last night and then basically make two nice self-contained chapters that were like sun and moon and nicely showed how yaz grows and how her feelings toward the doctor change from series 11 to series 12. thats what i WANTED to do. and the bones of that are still in here, but theres so much more stuff that kinda, snuck in, that the original parallels i wanted to write, the parallels and comparisons, dont really work out anymore? there's a lot of loose threads basically.
> 
> but i still like how it turned out. despite that. i like chapter 2 especially because i havent written about this before and i think i explored+portrayed my ideas about how yaz feels during series 12 pretty accurately. i think i did yaz more justice than ive done her in any other fic.
> 
> at first i didnt realise that after villa diodati, if they sleep after that, idk that they do but lets assume, thats their last night on the tardis! i was just kinda picking a random night at first but then i fell upon this one and realised it was actually their last night on the tardis so it was perfect.
> 
> and villa diodati is like really traumatising? i think it's sort of re-traumatising for the doctor, with all the bill reminders and the fact that she dooms humanity. she loses against the cybermen AGAIN. i do not think she would be okay after that. this is the stuff shes been walking around with since the very beginning of series 11, and shes dealing with gallifrey trauma too now, and then she gets this all thrown in her face? i dont think she can be okay after that.
> 
> and yaz. yaz with the patience of a saint, who is shouldering the cumulative weight of the scenes in praxeus, fugitive of the judoon TWICE, tesla, orphan 55, spyfall + her own history that shes keeping hidden that she just got reminded of/closure of in 12x7.  
> yaz is a lot like the doctor in a few ways and she is carrying all of her pain alone, in silence. her go to move when dealing with the doctor being an awful person and being super cruel to them is to push her feelings to the side. a lot of the time she even manages to replace her pain and anger with empathy! at the end of 12x5 she does this very clearly. and again in 12x8 when talking to claire, she defends the doctor. (wrote a little bit about this here too: https://you-have-to-use-your-imagination.tumblr.com/post/627960274055544832/thinking-about-12x5-dont-lie-to-us-and-you-ask)
> 
> so yeah, yaz deserves to be angry, she deserves to confront the doctor (ryan and graham too, of course, but i think yaz is the one who needs it most because she's LIKE the doctor. shes also private and also has a history of suicidal ideation. she also wants to Help. she's police. the doctor has the police box. theyre a lot alike. yaz needs to confront the doctor i feel. i hope thats whats gonna happen eventually.  
> and i rewrote big parts of this a bunch of times, and i didnt work. it kept not working. until i let yaz be angry and sad and hurt and i let yaz have the breakdown. then it worked.  
> and i really dont like the doctor in this. i think most of the time i can overlook or excuse to an extent how awful she is to the fam because i know shes in pain. basically like yaz does. but here both her and yaz are at their breaking points and their both really unable to try and empathise. i mean yaz still does that in big parts of this (which is commendable) and the doctor is incapable of that for all of s11 and s12, but still it gets to a climax here i think. yaz stops trying to accomodate the doctor and the doctor is unable to accomodate yaz.
> 
> what i did like what i did with her here though is the anger as defence against fear thing. i dont know how obvious it is because i didnt really spell it out but basically what i think the doctor does a lot of the time is use anger to keep herself upright? anger is energising, without that she'd just be a heap on the ground. and here i really lean into that. i make her use her anger very irrationally and viciously against yaz because at this point shes so traumatised and scared it's that or uncontrollable shaking with fear. which she also does.  
> basically the more scared she is the more vicious she becomes. i dont know whether i could support that claim with canon examples but it is how i tend to write her i think. and it feels in character, so.
> 
> ummm let me know what you thought! come talk to me about 13 or yaz! in the comments or on tumblr: https://you-have-to-use-your-imagination.tumblr.com/


End file.
